WG Q&A with Anton Pankov and Konstantin Soldatov

– The system of incentives for old beta players in the works, not only for the “Alpha-Beta” testers, but for all testers in general. – We’ve had some employees leave us.

* Anton, can you comment on when the third iteration of the test will be?

– Minimally. What is on the test now is almost the final version of the patch.

* Anton, if you can answer this question: The T95E2 has 181 mm penetration. However, it has exactly the same turret, gun and other performance characteristics of 59-Patton, which has 190 mm penetration. Can you make them the same already? – Yes, it is in the plans.

* When will the T26E5 added to the list for comparing on the site? And its strange that it was found that the IS-5 can not be compared in a hangar (9.16).

– We will fix it.

* So it is necessary to alter Personal Missions. For example, potatoes are saying that it facilitated the task and what you think they did? Setting SPG-10 for the Obj.260 was to facilitate basically killing two arty.

– It is normal logic. For the 260 you can work hard. When we last looked at Personal Missions, we relied on the statistics of executions and the number of attempts made players and based on this made some tasks much easier, such as arson.

* Anton, you’ve made some compensations on the stats for the Kranvagn, and buff vertical angles at 50b. I expect something like this for the T57 Heavy, he’s no longer the same as before.

– There are plans for the Heavy, but not in this version and not the next. The tank fits the general standards, but it could use a tune up.

* This year you’ve been working on buffing/balancing premium tanks at this time, which is logical and reasonable, but for some reason you missed the obvious ones, why not work with T-34-85M? You will recall that the situation with the tank, when the players have been waiting for premium Soviet medium and then were basically given a turd play, but people bought it. Though after selling the T-34-85 Rudy, an analog line tank, those who bought T-34-85M were left out in the cold, not a very good move by management.

– We simply have not reached the T-34-85M yet.

From Konstantin Soldatov:

– In secret, female voice for tank crews has already been written, but we did not like it, it’s between us.

– When something is absolutely ready to be a feature in game will we start talking about it. We do not want a repeat of 2014: Havok, the situation with HD tanks, which we’re still working on or haven’t implemented in 2.5 years. For one simple reason, worldwide large companies make the product roll out and preparedness, we have the same people want to know everything at once, in advance, even if it’s not close to being done, but they are confident that it will be done. And this is not right, because It creates false expectations.

– T-54 first prototype – is now nothing is planned with him to change.

– Panther / M10 – It will be looked at a bit later. Now we’re mainly focusing on the Tier 8 prems. One by one, not all at once.

-In December, a lot of things will be sold. Skorpion G just finished selling.

– E-25 should not be commercially available.

– We can’t disclose any info for the new year.

– A market of used tanks not will be implemented, as it demolishes the whole concept of the economy.

– The population peak is now around 620-630k online, lower than last year. We are waiting for the usual increase online at the New Year. Last year we raised the population decently online with E25, but it left a definite negative impact in the game.

– New unique individual on camouflage tank, it is a good idea. We really want to do customization, but can’t right now. Now we’we’re focusing on solving the other problems.

I don’t believe the T54 mod 1 has 175 pen and the frontal armor is equivalent to +200mm of effective armor unless you get an angle over or under it, then any tank at tier 8 can be penned by 175mm rounds with that logic. If anything, tier 8 mediums in general have poor dpm for their low alpha compared to any other tier. It isn’t a problem specific to the T54 mod 1 if anything but just the balance of power creep in general. If you can’t pen an enemy tank in front, just track and spot them for your allies while absorbing as much dmg as possible. Pretty much a support heavy and most people don’t understand that and wish the tank were a proper heavy like an IS-6

It’s winrate is terrible and for the amount of owners it’s rarely played. 120mm effective frontal armour isn’t that impressive at tier 6 especially since turret is still only 90mm thick with a big weak copula.

It’s biggest problem is that its gun is only good on a mobile medium (A-43) but it’s not very mobile at all and it gets bad gun handling and accuracy on an already sub-par gun.

That 120 mm frontal effective armor is better than a T-150, Vk 36.01 H, KV-85, M6, and HT No. VI. tell me again the frontal armor is not good because you must never have heard of angling. The Turret is fairly troll, it’s not supposed to be invincible like a T32 or as good as an E8’s because that’s not the russian thing at mid tiers but all the auto bounce angles make it better than an ARL 44 and Vk 36.01H and arguably better than a churchill VII’s turret or as good as an M6’s or KV-85’s turret.

I believe the copula though is there to remind you to move as no one wants a super hull down vehicle at tier 6.

I had to review the gun handling stats, on the move it is pretty awful but the turret traverse soft stats of .12 dispersion is as good as the cromwell. Meaning after you bounce an enemy shell, you can stop and hit the target pretty well. Not a sniper, but more of a mid to close range brawler because sniping is the T-34-85’s strong suit.

Mobility wise, everything is marginally worse than a T-34-85 except for the hull traverse which is a full 2 degrees more on the T-34-85M but otherwise not reaching its top speed of 53 km/hr as quickly as a T-34-85 is to be expected as that tank has less armor to haul around.

It really isn’t that bad of a tank for a vehicle that was designed back when premiums were not supposed to be as good as regular tanks since they had a credit earning bonus. I enjoyed it while it was on rental, but sadly, most people who drive the tank think it’s supposed to be a T-34-85 instead its closer competitor is a Type 58.

“It is normal logic. For the 260 you can work hard. When we last looked at Personal Missions, we relied on the statistics of executions and the number of attempts made players and based on this made some tasks much easier, such as arson.”

I’m on MT-7.4 (kill 3 arties in a medium) for almost two months now. This mission is fucking impossible. Two thirds of your games dont have the matchmaking requirements (no arty or less than 3), and of all the games that do have 3 arties, either you get killed too early, either you get killstolen, either you get shotgun, either your team caps.

2 months on one mission. And the biggest problem with that isnt that a mission is hard to do ; its that you can only pick one at the time. I always start by the hardest missions like this one so I dont finish it without activating it, but within these 2 months I have easily done every single other MT mission at least once. But because I havent finished this mission I cant make the others.
They should allow to activate 2 missions, so while you try to do one that depends on everything but you (mm, team, ennemies, rng, etc…), you can have another one started which you can complete in the mean time.

And all missions that rely on matchmaking (kill X tanks of X class / kill X tanks X tiers higher than you) should be either removed either doable over multiple battles (within 3 consecutive battles maybe ? This kind of system exists since they used it for the Best Tankers event, so why not for PMs ?).

If next PMs are like the current ones I doubt they’ll be as popular. These are personal missions, they have nothing personal. All of them depend on either luck with rng or mm, either luck with your team or the ennemy team making good/bad decisions ; I hardly see a single one which relies on how skilled you are except maybe the “do/block X dmg”, and even then the block dmg is more luck than skill with all the gold, arty and T110E5 armor going on.
The only way to make missions that rely on skill is to allow them over multiple battles, so players have a chance to go chase the right tanks at the right time of the battle instead of hoping for good mm and rushing like pigs whenever mm is actualy good.

For mt-7 you should platoon with other arties in a cromwell so artillery gets in your mm and you’re fast enough to kill them.

Otherwise been stuck on HT-15 for the T55A while getting the mission done with honors so I don’t have to work my way up to high tier artillery. The missions are tough and expensive. Apparently you can do the mission in an E-100 but I haven’t had much luck so spent the past year trying to get other tier X heavies like the Maus and T110E5.

These missions are outstandingly difficult and the rewards like the T28 HTC are just money sinks. Perhaps it was intended less than 1% of the community should complete all the missions because it was directed toward long term players. I can understand the decision making for this but it doesn’t make it right to not add anything to personal missions in over 2 years unless you count the removed rampage personal missions as a temporary expansion.

For HT15 try VK45.02B
It has the armor to survive even tier X TDs and tier X non-TD gold shells, and it can meet tier 7s which can just keep firing at you with no danger. And the gun is powerful enough to do dmg, and the tank can still take tons of dmg.

T110E5 is a beast from front but too unreliable from sides and rear. And Maus doesnt work and wont work as long as gold exists. Sidescraping works well but situations where you can block so many dmg is too rare to be worth it.
E-100 works pretty good too, much more flexible than Maus, and KV-4 works but only for the two first missions (T55A and OBJ ask for too much dmg for KV).

I was stuck on HT12 for the T28 for 6 months, with the amount of gold rounds how the hell was I meant to bounce twice my hp, doing the 1500 damage was easy. Luckily I managed it in the Liberte the other day.
But it’s similar again to MT15 for the T28, I did 2k damage to TDs after a long wait but then got teamkilled by arty so I need to do the bloody thing again. Thing is, there aren’t enough TDs to kill that get you 2k damage…

“– The population peak is now around 620-630k online, lower than last year. We are waiting for the usual increase online at the New Year. Last year we raised the population decently online with E25, but it left a definite negative impact in the game.”

With a game built on short term fixes, it’s no wonder that the fixes you implement only work in the short term. What we really need to see out of WG is their long term vision and the method by which they are going to accomplish it. That is- IF they are actually going to stick with WoT for a long time to come (unlikely).
I’m calling it now, when WoT II comes out (or whatever they will call it) they will support our current game for a couple years and then leave it to die like Windows XP. If all current tanks could be transferred into the new game with your account, I might come back to the game, but no way am I going to hang around and stick with a game that takes too much of your time and offers too little in return. They have milked the player base too much and employed “Skinner Box” methods for too long. Now all they can really do is limp the current game along into retirement until the new game comes out. It’s a shame. They could have done so much more with this.

I wouldn’t divide the community with world of tanks II and world of tanks I or else you’ll get the rampage problem where it gets some publicity for a time but since the majority of people’s friends are still in regular pubs, no one will really want to leave their friends and clan mates behind.

So far wargaming have been good about not selling the E25 for over a year so they probably have learned their lesson about that tank. Otherwise, experimenting is good and reacting on ceasing the marketing of overpowered tanks is encouraged while they find the right formula for the next greatest hit tank that is fun but not abusive. It’s tough. A good long term strategy is just to include a very wide variety of nations in the game and make more free content because that will get new players into the game and encourage them to buy existing vehicles that have already been properly accepted within the community. Really, this is where personal missions are great because they are the only place where you can include partial trees of tanks like polish, italian, and israli tanks.

The advent calendar still isn’t done. Besides, no need to try and sell the E25 if most of all the people who are likely to buy it already have it. It’s already evident that they just want to cash out with all the new premiums being introduced in short terms. If a tank is good enough to be introduced, it should go in the tech tree to stay. I understand keeping some back, but it’s getting ridiculous. That concern is just petty of me, though. What is really worrying is the continued need of gold and the lack of ability to get what you want done through silver. Changing crewman roles/information, applying permanent camo, and even buying prem time. Look at Warcraft and Hearthstone! Both of those allow you to use funds you acquire in game to access large aspects of gameplay like the adventures in Hearthstone. Even then, they realize it’s really only worth a couple dollars in real money. If WG really looks up to Blizzard, why not adopt more of their methods?

True about the advent calendar and your logic is fair for the market of the E25 is exhausted. I also agree with you that many of these tanks would make great free content to attract new players rather than feed off the dwindling whales left in world of tanks while many of these premiums might stop new lines from being put together. I do however believe that money should be spent for convinience rather than content so that spending gold for a 100% crew is fair and using food and crew skills to help advance crew training through credit means already exists. Meanwhile, camo is a credit sink for the game, otherwise inflation would be more prevalent while the marginal camo boost is there, it is just something there for convinience and you can purchase camo for a month at a discount in credits, thus acceptable. Buying premium time is the ultimate convinience, wargaming gets a lot of revenue from that and it is not critical to how you play in random matches so competitively it is fine to be sold for only gold.

I have not played warcraft but as for hearthstone, their monetization policies are different because both games are fundamentally different. You are also asking to divide the community between free users and paying users which is morally cruel and financially disasterous in a world of tanks community. Could you imagine unlocking tier X with money or certain maps with money? The lobby times would kill the game alone if you did not consider the potential of rigging made enormously easier. I do agree that there should be smaller payment fees in the $1 range but that’s the price of a permanent camo and at a fair $5 you can still buy a premium tank. The reason prices have to be so high is because wargaming sells larger packages of hearthstone cards in the form of a tank. You cannot say that a pack of 5 hearthstone cards is equivalent to a tier 8 premium tank because the relevance to gameplay is enormously different.

I really appreciate you suggesting new monetization policies but you don’t seem to have any consideration for a company at all and only what is most convinient for yourself.

If you want world of tanks to be more similar to hearthstone, wargaming should market random premium tank parts for $1-$5 a piece and once you have collected enough parts, say 30 parts, through pub matches and store payments, you will have the chance of assembling the premium tank that you wanted but probably you won’t have all the parts and be forever stuck at 29 parts to completion. Hell, why not even give the option to balance every part with a point value system so you could mismatch different parts and build your own customizable tank? Doesn’t that sound like a great idea? I know wargaming would love to make a monetary policy like a card game because the two have so much in common.

You’re upset they saved the buff for the super pershing for December? Looks like standard marketing there or just that they couldn’t say they would buff a tank until they were sure it was going to happen(ie why tanks need testing), and in general not letting their consumer’s hopes down. Also, could you give me some examples of what they fixed that caused a new problem? I always do enjoy a new problem to harp at wargaming about on their power creep/accretion.

Nah “upset” is the wrong word, better insert amaze. I just think its funny that a multi million dollar company to bring in a statement like this and completely refuse it a short time after.

Well there are a shitload of examples where Wargaming did something without thinking about all consequences:
– Overmatch Mechanics (ok they postponed it)
– Emblems and inscriptions (cancelled after shitstorm)
– completely overbuffing E5
– PZ II.J 100€ bundles
– clown skins (mutz, patriot, amx liberte)
– as you even mentioned yourself the powercreep where tanks and even complete branches like the french tds are left behind

to just mention some things that came to my mind without any further research

Alright haha, I can agree it is pretty funny to see them dance like that. Oh um.. Long list down below, sorry in advance.

-Personally I think I would have liked to see what world of tanks would be like with the auto overmatch mechanics removed as there would be a bigger emphasis on armor and flanking, plus a lot of tanks like the Swedish tree would be very unpopular if russian tanks could auto pen them only. But it is much more complicated than I could ever sum up. Probably postponing the changes was like it was conforming to the idea that it was wrong and we’ll have to see wargaming rebalance a lot of tanks whith the patch where they finally decide to implement the change.

-Emblems and Inscription power ups: awful idea, thank goodness it only made it as far as testing but since it didn’t enter the game, was it a problem with the game itself or that wargaming likes to test out new things?

-completely overbuffing the E5: meh, a lot of people will say it is not over buffed, +230 pen can get through the coupula and the lower plate is exagerated as being invincible, it is a good tank, no denying it, but most people just don’t know how to take it down and just think it is unstoppable.

-Pz II J: that one was hilarious and for the collectors, there are quite a few tanks that can pen it at low tiers but like any high class seal clubber, they will wreck shop. This tank has a design scheme that screamed more of burning excess cash from high end players. Not the most elegant situation yes, but I might see one once a month if I play low tiers at all. Most beginners won’t even see them anyways because it takes 30min to an hour to get equal tiered or higher. I consider it more of a learning experience that world of tanks isn’t all about brute force but maneuver and hitting the enemy where they are weakest.

-Clown skins on the mutz as you call it is done right, it looks war torn, cool, and like alpine camoflauge. The nationalism painted tanks are debatable, perhaps a new gimmick to attract new players and buyers while getting free publicity in a trump style campaign tactic. It’s more of a personal opinion if you think they are ugly and since they are not trend setters and just an experiment on the market, you cannot call it a problem. Maybe not releasing a non painted scheme but that’s a problem server specific.

-power creep is easy to sum up in one bland sentence but it is very complicated and you need specifics like saying the T26E5 was so good that it forced wargaming to buff the T34 and T26E4 but that could just be mistaken for a new policy that premium tanks are to be just as good as regular tanks in the modern form of the game despite their credit earning potential which is not power creep since you are not altering the battle performance of tanks, ie if an under powered tank is buffed so it is at equal power, there is no power creep, just more convinience for the owner and an argument toward fair play. Plus, a lot of people don’t realize how fragile the T26E5 if you track it or shoot its sides plus out alpha trading it. I have not played the french td’s but I think they suffer more from nerf fallout like chernobyl rather than actual power creep, i’ll have to play the line to make any kindnof decision first.

Sorry for long post, but saying I disagree with you isn’t all that constructive.

– Minimally. What is on the test now is almost the final version of the patch.

So that means the historical inaccuracy of the Swedish HTs will remain? That’s fucked, way to fuck off all of SP15’s research on vehicles. The Emil 1 in-game isn’t even the Emil 1, the Emil 1 should have a pike-nose hull, the turret armor has been increased by 40-55 mm in all cases and the hull armor reduced by 5-30mm in all cases. Then theres the engine power. The Emil should have a 550hp engine, Emil 1 = 500hp, Emil 2 = 540 or 665hp engine. Incidentally the Kranvagn has the right power buy it 3t heavier then it should be which gives it a worse power to weight then it should have had.

T57 with the most health can wheather a storm better then the AMX but not as well as the KRV
AMX is fast and mobile but lacks armor and health so this lets it be a better hit and run tank
KRV has the best armor so it can slug it out better then the other 2 can and decent mobility, so worst dpm is a balance facter there

And since the T57 (in the form of T58) and KRV were planned to get 15cm/155mm autoloaders you could offer them a choice of 12cm autoloader of 15cm/155mm single shot.

Interesting, going to have to be careful there to not make another WTF E100, honestly, the AMX 50B shouldn’t have the best dpm of the heavy tanks because that defeats the purpose of a mobile, bursty autoloader and no one really consider ramming as a part of its gameplay anymore. Kind of why fast autoloaders in the french line and light tanks in general don’t have amazing dpm since their role in battle is to be a precision assasin. Making the T57 more of an hp sponge while nerfing its dpm is a well intentioned idea but if the T57 is a tank focused on soaking up damage rather than dishing it out, it will breach the role of other tanks that have their role in soaking up damage, then again, if it cannot soak up damage as good as them, what’s the point of driving a T57 heavy after your changes and not a krv or amx 50b that have something special about them? Finally, for the krv being a low dpm tank with high damage soaking capabilities is find with your changes, just keep in mind that if it were made historically accurate, few people would recognize the armor as an asset if it did not have something that stood out from the crowd.

Was neat to read, balancing is hard, but you made clear goals on your intentions ^^b

Well its why i suggested single shots over autoloaders for the 15cm/155mm guns, to avoid that WT E100 scenario.

And these are just suggestions after all but I feel it might be a good place for WG to start from. And while historical armor would be thinner then now on the turret it would ba about 244mm effective on flat terrain and 320mm when using its -12 gun depression so it would still be the most effect as a ridgeline warrior

Ah, my bad there about the single shot gun suggestions, I missed that, would be fun to give the E100 some lightweight competition. And very neat on the KRV stats, those would be pretty good in the current game. This would be wonderful for testing. I would really like to see a version of this on the sandbox or at least supertesting because if not for a new gun option, the possibility of a new tank line is exciting.

If you think that’s interesting I found what could be a tier 8 premium as well. There was a plan documented to mate one of the Emil 3 hulls that were built with a Centurion Mk10 turret with corresponding 105mm gun.

Change the armor configuration from the E III 2c configuration to possibly the E III 1b configuration it’s weight would be around 34.68t with a 723hp engine giving it a power to weight of 20.48 hp/t. I’m currently working on photoshopping what this could possibly look like

O. O that’s quite a few variations, might be losing me a bit here because I’m not sure how to compare them to the module upgrades for the swedish heavy tanks but you seem to know what you’re doing here.

Thank you for linning everything up about the protection, that helps give me a better idea of things indeed 🙂 and having some very poor gun handling to balance out any excess firepower or mobility is a pretty good way to go from a historically accurate view point, certainly could work.

Well then, that is one seriously curious tank, you made good time on making the picture so no need to say you’re sorry, i’m impressed. Stats can certainly be up in the air for development but I was considering something awful and evil. What if this tank fired HESH as standard? This limits its standard penetration to 210mm and its average damage goes to 480. If you nerf the rate of fire of the centurion 7/1 to about 4 rounds per minute from 5.2, it will have the same dpm as every other tier 8 heavy. This could be pretty fun having players mess around with HE mechanics.

Curious, that gun could certainly work on the tank and the bottom of the barrel hitpoints, view range, and armor does even things out. Where did you find this weapon? My question is do you think the slower centurion 1 is equal to this tank? The centurion 1 will have the better camo, view range, side armor and .01 better accuracy with 226mm pen but does that justify a 200 dpm disadvantage and 90 alpha disadvantage coupled with an overall mobility disadvantage? Maybe the gun is too good for 320 alpha my point being is the tiger II has a 2.5 aim time and 110 has a 2.9 aim time and even the T32 with 2.3 aim time has .40 accuracy, only the 110 has better dpm by 50 points. Even the tank’s closest mobillity competitor, the AMX 50 100 will have a 3 sec aim time so maybe 2.3 is a bit much especially if the tank gets 10 degrees of gun depression.

That’s just me being nit picky. You did really well on deciding the stats on the tank, a lot of people would have given it something game breaking without any flaws so well done to your thoughtfulness. I too would think that messing around with HESH would be fun but the rate of fire here is too good for the alpha boost haha. Perhaps when wargaming do release a premium HESH spammer we will have some ground work to look into.

Eek, nearly forgot about the T34 again, 2.7 aim time and .38 accuracy so not to infringe on the T34’s snipping power. Even if the power to weight ratio were 15 instead of your estimate of 20, that would be outstanding.

T34 is kinda different tho since it’s still got its top gun from when it was a regulart tier 9 thats been nerfed slightly for balance. The 105mm gun we can kinda make what we want so we can make it more of a mobile british sniper gun compared to the slow american brawler gun

-“last year we raised population decently with e25”
:what?? On which server?? Eu Region didn’t saw any e25 on the shop for over 2 years… it really starts to piss many people off that they sell bullshit black paintings and stuff but not much wanted tanks such as the e25.. so
Again.. fu wg.

I guess the rebalance that was promised for this year is not going to happen. Well maybe not promised but we were surely led to believe that it would happen in 2016. I guess this means that the game balance is all ok….arty is ok, light tanks are ok…everything is in a fine state of balance. All of the things discussed by these two guys is obviously more important.

Never heard of this global rebalance coming up in 2016, probably some old news back before wargaming changed their news policy of trying to avoid giving anything out unless it was confirmed. That’s why you didn’t see any info on a global rebalance on the homepage.

I’m disappointed about the E 25. I shifted my World of Tanks play from the NA to the EU servers just after it was taken off sale. Don’t have an E 25 on my EU account and I miss it. Don’t have a Type 59 either but that one’s been gone for longer and I play German TD’s a lot more than play Chinese MT’s.

So the super pershing gets an amazing pen buff (200+) while the kv-5 with its sub-par armor and absolute garbage pen (167) are just left in the dust, most premiums have just as much pen as the gold on kv5 now.